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Comment by chrischen | Hacker News Reader

Maybe I'm living under a rock (I don't, I live in SF), but I don't know anyone who uses Whatsapp in my two and a half years here.

iMessage, texts, facebook message, Wechat, but never a single Whatsapp user.

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It's preferred over texting in almost every country I've visited, but it's never caught on in the US.

Most smartphone users in Singapore use WhatsApp for general texting too.

On the other hand, WeChat, LINE and KakaoTalk seem to have rather limited audiences here. (Much of the LINE usage between myself and friends is sticker spam.)

chrischen: What do iOS and Android users in your circles use for free cross-platform texting?

For cross platform we just use Facebook message and SMS. I looked it up, and Whatsapp has very little market share in the US. In China it's pretty dominated by Wechat.

Here in Japan it's hard to find anyone under 40 who doesn't use Line for nearly all their messages. The carriers make it extremely expensive for people to communicate with users on other networks so people just circumvent texting and calling with line. I've asked my friends why they use it and they all say because they like the stickers.The market was wide open for a while, it just took some good marketing.

Curious: They've stopped using "email"? I'm guessing LINE's becoming ubiquitous because of the free functions and the cute stickers.

Everybody in latin america uses WhatsApp. It's a common saying to say, "whatsapp me", instead of inbox me these days.

I've never heard anyone say "inbox me." It's always "text me", "facebook message me", or "send me an email."

>'tsapp me

rolls off the tongue better for me...

Huge in Australia too, FWIW.

Ha! The case is entirely different here in Nigeria. I don't know anyone that does NOT use Whatapp. I have over 300 WhatsApp contacts.

Messaging apps have long been regional due to network effects. In Canada, my friends used MSN Messenger, in the US, AIM. In China, QQ/Wechat, in the US it's mostly been SMS/iMessage or Facebook messages. I've yet to locate a Whatsapp location, but I guess Nigeria is one.

Germany, too, as SMS flatrates got to the market rather late and there was some social networking confusion with the VZ group, slowing down the expansion/adoption of Facebook a bit.

In Australia, Whatsapp is very big within at least the Asian communities I've found

Very popular in EU

Everyone[0] uses Whatsapp in Europe.

[0]Source - me.

I live in Europe and have never heard of it. I'm guessing it's some kind of messaging app.

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